Too Pretty to Eat...Almost

Doug and I were introduced to the joys of bacon from happy pigs last New Year's Eve when some friends brought over some from Rainbow Meadow Farms.  It has since been referred to as the "Amazing Bacon".  It is so thick and fresh that it doesn't even curl up when you cook it.  I bake it in the oven and it comes out, flat, crisp and, well, amazing.  Unfortunately there are no pictures of the bacon, I was too busy eating it.

I went by the Rainbow Meadow Farms stand on my latest trip to the State Farmers Market to hopefully score some Amazing Bacon and to consider buying an Amazing Chicken while I was at it.  While I am all in favor of eating critters that live a happy life in open pastures, I am not quite ready for an $18 chicken.  This is in large part due to my lack of expertise with cooking whole birds.  I'll get there.

The very nice (and chatty) lady running the booth was going to run my debit card for the $7.something for the bacon even though she only liked to do it for over $10 when she offered me some fresh eggs to go with it.  Having not even thought about eggs, I happily agreed.  She then pulled out the most beautiful eggs I have ever seen.  They are Araucana eggs, and although I had a hard time capturing it on film, they are a delicate greenish-blue.

I'll admit to having entirely too much fun snapping pictures of these little beauties.  After a lifetime of sorted-by-size plain old white eggs, I found it incredibly and ridiculously charming that these were all different shapes and sizes.  I fried a bunch of them up (in a bit of Amazing Bacon fat of course) to have with the Amazing Bacon on Sunday and got a surprise.  I felt silly because I was a little sad to break such pretty eggs, but it was fun to crack the two biggest ones to find double yolks.  These eggs were even pretty on the inside, with a rich, golden yolk.  The only thing that could have made Sunday breakfast better would have been fresh-baked bread, but I have absolutely no luck in the kitchen with yeast.  In the lab, on the other hand, I put those yeasties to work!

Now, prepare for Eggs as Art!

Fancy Salad

Grandad (Papa) and Grammy (Yea-Yea) came out this weekend to visit their Sweet P.  We made our way down to the State Farmers Market on Saturday and I was inspired by all of the beautiful and delicious things I found there.  More on that in another post.  And, yes, I know that most or all of the produce I bought was not grown locally.  I'm okay with that for now.  Slowly, slowly I will consider the buy local thing for produce.  I'm not quite ready to only eat within the growing season, forsaking all else.

For dinner Saturday night I made a salad similar to one I've seen made on one the the approximately 9.5 million cooking shows I've watched.  First, the most beautiful, green and healthy-looking Boston lettuce I've ever seen, $5.00 for two giant heads.

Then toasted pecans and dried cherries because I didn't have any dried cranberries.  Finally, I broiled some rounds of goat cheese to put on top.  I think I overbroiled them just a tad, but they sure were pretty. I know it looks like a scallop in the photo, but it was goat cheese.  Add balsamic vinagrette and enjoy (with the sparkling wine we never drank at New Year's).  Yum!

Shades of Gray, Episode 1: High-fructose Corn Syrup

Okay, folks.  I have done my best to be a neutral informer, with a few opinions thrown in for interest.  Comments should be open, no login needed.  Talk to me!

A recent blog post by a friend addressed the pickle of the abundance of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in food and how expensive a trip to the grocery store can be if you want to avoid it.  Please read the post and my comment to gain some background for this post.

I took her challenge to look in my pantry to see where I found HFCS and I actually found much less than I expected.  Where I did find it was in products that we don't need, like packaged cookies and the few soft drinks we have.  This includes my ginger ale, which I don't intend to give up.  I know you can use tonic water as a mixer, but I prefer my Canada Dry.  Gin, vodka, rum, whiskey...you really can't go wrong.

From my position atop the fence of science I wanted to give some background on the topic and share my thoughts on the subject.  I don't propose to know anything about government subsidies or tariffs or anything like that.  I do know about science and food, so that is what I will focus on.

The basic health concern is that HFCS makes us fat, as in fatter than eating regular sugar would.  The reasoning is that there is more fructose - which does not trigger an insulin response and feelings of satiety - than glucose which does.  This is not exactly comparing apples to apples, but I'll do my best.

First of all, what is sucrose?

Sucrose, or table sugar, is a disaccharide with one glucose molecule and one fructose molecule.  For future reference, that's 50% glucose and 50% fructose.  It is made by crystallizing the juice squeezed from sugar cane or sugar beets (1).

What is high fructose corn syrup?
HFCS is made by treating corn starch with several enzymes.  First of all, you need to know that corn starch is made up of long, branched chains of glucose molecules.  To make HFCS, it is treated with:

1. alpha-amylase - breaks the long, branched chains of glucose down into shorter, unbranched chains of glucose molecules
2. glucoamylase - breaks the shorter chains of glucose into individual glucose molecules
3. xylose isomerase - converts some of the glucose into fructose

Stopping after Step 2 produces corn syrup, as in Karo Syrup, with no fructose (check the label, I have some store brand corn syrup that does contain HFCS).  After all three steps, the final product is about 42% fructose and 50-52% glucose with small amounts of some other sugars.    Then, in a separate process, some of the 42% fructose solution is enriched to about 90% fructose and 10% glucose.  The 90% fructose solution is blended back into the 42% solution to create a solution of 55% fructose and 42% glucose.  So, there are three products:

1. HFCS 42 - used in foods and baked goods
2. HFCS 55 - mostly used in soft drinks
3. HFCS 90 - used in some (unspecified) specialty applications, but mostly used for making HFCS 55

High fructose corn syrup was first created in 1957, but it could not be produced on a large scale until the late 1960's.  Then, from 1975 to 1985, it was rapidly introduced into the food processing industry, especially soft drinks (1).

Why is HFCS so widely used?
There are several reasons, but a major reason is the fact that it is cheaper than sucrose.  Corn subsidies, tariffs and trade quotas artificially raise the price of refined sugar in the United States and a few other places.  Additionally, it is easier to transport and blend into products because it is a liquid (1).

Functionality in foods
I went looking for reasons why HFCS as an ingredient may be preferable to sugar and found this (2).  My opinion is that, except for perhaps the extension of shelf stability (meaning anti-staling in this case), pourability of frozen concentrates and firmness retention in frozen fruits, sugar serves most of the same purposes, though it will take more labor and energy to incorporate it into the product because it will have to be dissolved with heat and mixing.  This means a higher production cost which means a higher price on the grocery store shelf.

So, who is to blame?
I would say greed and primal instincts.  We can hardly be surprised that the Corn Refiners Association is defending their product.  They do need to sell it, after all.  However, instead of telling us that HFCS is good for us, I would prefer to see them create some data that at least shows that it's not worse for us than sucrose.  Many studies have been done, but, as with most scientific research, for every study that says one thing there is a bigger and better study that says something completely different.

Food manufacturers also need to sell their products, and they sell us want we want.  We choose the products in taste tests that determine the formulations used in food products, and we likely choose the ones with with the sweetest taste (i.e. higher levels of HFCS).  All living things have the need for sustenance, and we all like sweet things and fat.  This is a survival instinct and has been true since the dawn of time.  I bet if there was a pecan pie available the cave kids would have been trying to sneak a slice before they finished their hunk of woolly mammoth.

And now...DATA!
You knew it was coming.

In 2002, consumers around the world spent almost 3 times as much money on soft drinks as we did on fruit, $193 billion (USD) on soft drinks and $69 billion on fruit (3).  That was more than 327 billion liters!  I couldn't find anything more recent on spending, but I did find this table showing that we Southerners consistently spend the most on soft drinks (4).  Maybe this has something to do with that old joke about Mountain Dew in the baby bottle.  It is cheaper than formula.

I did some research at the local grocery store to attempt to put the spending in perspective.  I chose the 2 liter soft drink as the vessel for comparison.  The store brand 2 liter soft drink is $1.29 and name brands are $1.59 to $1.79, we'll say $1.50 for an average.  According to the label, a 2 liter bottle contains eight eight ounce servings, that's about $0.19 per serving.  For the same $1.50 you could buy:

• 1.5 apples ($1 per serving)
• 1.5 pears ($1 per serving)
• 1.5 oranges ($1 per serving)
• 1/2 lb. strawberries ($0.75 per serving)
• 1.5 grapefruits ($0.50 per serving)
• 1/3 lb. grapes ($0.50 per serving)
• 1/2 a cantaloupe ($0.37 per serving)
• 8 medium bananas ($0.19 per serving)

The only fruit that is comparable in cost per serving is the banana.  So, excluding the banana, you can get 2 to 5 servings (that's 8 ounces!) of soda for the same price as one serving of fruit.  By my wonky calculations, that changes the implications of the previous spending statistic quite a bit.  As in we actually consumed a lot more than three times the amount of soda compared to fruit.

In Conclusion
By the numbers, most of the HFCS we encounter outside of soft drinks actually has less fructose than regular white sugar (42% fructose compared to 50% in table sugar).  What is in soft drinks is only a little more fructose than glucose (55% fructose).

I believe it's not the amount of HFCS we eat, it's the amount of sugar in any form that we eat that is the problem (5).  If you've ever read books that take place in the late 19th and early 20th century (such as my favorite - The Little House on the Prairie series), you know that white sugar and candy were very special treats.  It was brought out for company and occasionally found in a Christmas stocking.  I'm not saying that we need to be that spartan with the sugar.  I have as much of a sweet tooth as anyone else and I am happy to have a drawer full of chocolate and candy I can dig into at any time.  I just have to remember that is was my choice to buy it in the first place, and my choice to eat it.

As a final point, the actual amount of soda consumed at one sitting by the average consumer is far more than eight ounces. I've seen people drink 5 glasses at one meal, each one probably 12 to 16 ounces. I've never seen anyone eat 10 apples at once.


Resources

1. The Ultimate Resource - wikipedia.org
2. Corn Refiners Association - sweetsurprise.com
3. Market Research - researchwikis.com/Soft_Drink_Market
4. US Regional soft drink consumption - beveragemarketing.com
5. Health - mayoclinic.com

Recipe of the Week

I have something a little different for this weekend's recipe: a recipe for an ingredient!

The first time I visited Denmark in the spring of 2007, I was taken to a gourmet food shop in Copenhagen where I found a small packet of herb salt and a Weck jar.  Perfect for a souvenirs in my opinion - small, relatively inexpensive and practical.  The Weck jar is now the happy home of my brown sugar (and my brown sugar bear).  I put the salt in my sea salt grinder when I got home and starting grinding it on everything.

It's awesome on scrambled eggs.  I found that out when all I could manage for breakfast every day for about three weeks near the end of the first trimester was one egg scrambled in butter with the herb salt.  I don't really remember what was in it besides rosemary, but I recreate my own now with my favorite herbs.  Try it with your own favorite combination, but I highly recommend the rosemary.  It adds a tasty kick to vegetables, rice, eggs, you name it.

Herbed Sea Salt
*amounts are approximate

1 cup coarse sea salt
2 tbsp. dried rosemary leaves
1 tbsp. dried thyme leaves
1 tbsp. dried basil leaves

Mix all ingredients together and store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.  Grind over everything!

Exploring the Gray Areas

I have ideas for several posts about topics I've seen in the news over and over again in the last few years.  I believe our media does us a great disservice when they feed us biased, panic-inducing stories about the next big killer compound.  We accept what we are told as fact when there is actually a lot of gray in between the two sides.  I think Zero Tolerance is just an excuse to have Zero Common Sense, so I hope to be able to shine just a little bit of light in those gray areas and learn something myself while I'm at it.  Many of the topics are food related and are of particular interest to me after a lifelong love of food and cooking, a college education in Food Science, and as a mother in charge of (most of*) my daughter's diet.  I do not present myself as any kind of expert, only someone interested in looking at both sides of the story, trying to make some sense of it and sharing what I find.

It seems that the more health concious we get, the more horror stories there are about our food.  Over the years, as we changed from farmers to businessmen living packed together in bulging metropolises, the practice of preparing the yearly smoked pig, canning vegetables from the garden and making fruit preserves to get through the winter became obsolete.  Factories popped up to create foods that could live on a shelf long enough for the city folks to eat and food preservation on a mass scale was born.

Food production on this scale is rarely pretty; there are many things I wish I could unlearn from my college classes, but they are burned into my brain for good.  The joke around Schaub Hall was that roommates of food scientists watched carefully what the food science student would eat, if they wouldn't eat something, the roommate avoided it as well and never asked why.  The truth is that the creepy things done to food are done purely to get the most food to the most people at the lowest cost.  That doesn't mean that they are the best things you can choose to do to a poor, innocent potato, it only means that it won't be rotten or make you sick - at least not from food-borne illness.

As we come full circle and move back towards the ways of growing our own vegetables, buying locally, etc., etc., we have work to do as consumers.  Know what is done to your food but, more importantly know why.  When you see a news story about that new killer compound, ask why.  Why is it in my food?  Why is it supposed to be bad for me?  What are the alternatives?  Then you can choose whether you want to avoid it or not, if you are lucky enough to have the money to make those choices.

Remember that it is your choice to eat something or to not eat it, some people are just trying to get by.  Don't judge that lady at the store for buying those pre-made, frozen hamburger patties.  Maybe that's the only way she can afford actual meat protein for herself, husband, 4 children, Grandpa and crazy Aunt Petunia on two meager incomes.  Or, maybe she just likes the way they taste.  In 25 years we'll all be eating dehydrated food pellets anyway.**

*She eats lunch and two snacks at day care five days a week.  I don't like all of the food they serve there, but it's not too bad.
**I really hope not :p - but my husband, who I made read this post first hopes that we do end up eating food pellets, or at least some soylent green.

Shredded Brussels Sprouts

I like Brussels sprouts.  I like them steamed.  I like them roasted.  I really like steamed sprouts cut in half and broiled with some butter and parmesan cheese on top.  However, unless they are doused with butter and cheese, I pretty much only want one serving.  I made the recipe below recently, had seconds and seriously considered thirds.

The lemon juice neutralizes what I call the fart taste.  Or, as my more mature friend Kate says, the sulfur taste.  Anyway, the lemon juice brightens the flavor without making it sour or even lemony.  I loathe caraway seeds with the very fiber of my being, so I chose the poppy seeds.  They made the dish visually interesting and every once in a while you would actually chomp down on one which was kind of nice, but they certainly could be left out with no damage to the dish.  If you choose to use the caraway seeds, that is your choice.  I promise not to judge you....much.



Shredded Brussels Sprouts

1 pound fresh Brussels sprouts
3 Tbsp. butter
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. poppy seeds or caraway seeds
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper

Rinse sprouts, trim stems and remove any leaves with spots.
Thinly slice the sprouts.
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat.
Cook the sprouts just until wilted but still crisp-tender (about 3-5 minutes).
Add the lemon juice, seeds, salt and pepper.
Toss and serve.

Notes: I cut each one into 4 or 5 slices which worked fine, but it might be better a little thinner.  Also, the picture looks like they fell apart more than mine did, maybe the stem should be trimmed a bit so the outer leaves will fall off during cooking.

Adapted from Redbook October 2009 issue

Blog Resurrection

Hey, what's this?!?

[blows off a huge puff of dust and dog hair]

Oh, wow!  It's my blog!!!

Yes, I'm finally back after nearly a year.  I finally managed to find a web address that was available and I'll try to learn to do some other faincy computer-y things.  Why the changes you ask?  Because I have other things I would like to write about in addition to the joys of parenthood and it doesn't seem quite right under the Little Bug Strahler title.  Additionally, I don't want to lose all the hard work I put into the previous posts.  There's some good stuff in there, if I don't say so myself.

Look for new stuff soon!